One small step for mothers: next, please

Anyone who has ever had a baby knows that timing is important. Once you head down the road of maternity, you are timed at every stage from conception to due date, through the stages of labour and against the baby weight charts in the months that follow.

So Australian mothers could be forgiven for impatience at the untimely late arrival of some real support on the birth of a new baby - something that approaches paid maternity leave. It has taken 85 years for a major Australian political party to back a paid maternity leave scheme that would take Australia close to the 1919 International Labour Organisation recommendation. The ILO standard recognises that the physical act of maternity, and a fair go for women at work, requires paid rest for working mothers.

Way overdue, but better late than never, Labor's proposed baby care payment is an important step. It offers a payment to all eligible mothers that will eventually approach 14 weeks at minimum wage in 2010. You wouldn't want to rush things, after all.

A baby care payment for most mothers, with or without jobs, recognises that all mothers are working mothers. There are no watertight categories of women at home versus women at work, but rather a growing population of women who, more often than not, hold down a job as they hold a baby. Their households depend on their earnings.

The proposed payment promises support for the almost 2 million Australian women working part-time - many low-paid and casual with little negotiating power for paid maternity leave. It would replace much or all of their earnings for a time.

The proposal has several other virtues. First, it effectively replaces John Howard's baby bonus, an expensive, regressive, badly timed policy disaster. Second, it puts the greatest benefit where and when it is most needed - mothers' pockets. It does so with minimal paperwork, no tricky eligibility rules and some flexibility for mothers around when they get the payment.

The policy is a boon for two groups. First, it is a windfall for the thousands of Australian businesses which do not offer paid maternity leave. Hopefully, this will leave them free to top up the basic government payment, or provide other supports such as flexible return-to-work programs, secure part-time work or leave to care for dependants. Second, it gives additional support to the lucky third of Australian women who have some paid maternity leave, extending the time they can spend with newborns.

But this is a bargain basement proposal. For many women, the payment would be less than their usual pay. It is a small but significant step forward in a national work/care regime that makes it tough to have kids and a job.

No one can say Howard has not had time to respond to these issues. Instead he and his colleagues have backed bad policy and played political football with mothers. There is still plenty of time for him to catch up - child care, workplace flexibility and secure, reasonable, parent-friendly working hours are still policy challenges out there begging for action.

Barbara Pocock is an associate professor in social sciences at the University of Adelaide. Her latest book is The Work/Life Collision.